Indebted to Martin Flux for the lend of this crisp mixing desk quality tape of one of Crass’s very last gigs on the band’s last tour during May 1984.
Steve Ignorant collapses with exhaustion during the end of this performance showing the moment when the strain of consistent gigging with the band for over six years finally took it’s toll. B.A. Nana had long left Dial House and was living with the KYPP collective in the Black Sheep housing co-op housing in Islington.
Within a few days Crass would be touring no more and eventually disbanded for good. Penny Rimbaud and Eve Libertine went on to concentrate on the more avant garde side of Crass; continuing to release excellent work under the Crass name up until 1986.
Thanks to Martin also for the photographs that he supplied, one of which is actually St Georges Hall in Exeter being set up during the afternoon of the gig, and two from Cleator Moor Cumbria.
Text below from a Crass interview that first appeared in the St Albans fanzine ‘Mucilage’ from 1984. I think a guy called Aiden run the fanzine, but Allan Clifford interviewed the band and wrote the piece. Ripped off of John Edens uncarved.org site.
Love them or hate them, not many people can deny the enormous influence of CRASS over the last 7-8 years. The leading exponents of the ‘Anarcho-Punk’ genre, the band that launched a thousand clones and lit a candle of hope in thousands of hearts.
An interview of some sort was definitely in order, as much as to satisfy my own curiosity as to inform you the eager reader. The Crass-persons live in a small farmhouse somewhere in the North Weald, and very nice it is too. It was in this picturesque setting that we chatted with Peter Wright, Joy de Verve, Penny Rimbaud and G over a cup of funny tasting tea.
MUCILAGE: You’ve all been very quiet recently, what’s happening? A re-evaluation of aims, and methods?
Pete Wright: Yes, I think its two things, one side allowed ourselves space to try and discover and develop certain areas, we are still in the process of doing so, like launching ourselves into the dark with this new LP. On the other hand we do tend to withdraw occasionally from the arena to allow other people to get on with things. We don’t want to end up monopolising everything by continuously instituting moves, you have to stand back and clear the floor for people.
Some people in the band have done an album set of fifty poems; it’s sort of classical and hasn’t gone out as Crass. We felt we’d been jumping and shouting about things for quite a few years, we tried to see what positive contributions had been… a demonstration of our own positive side… we wanted to produce something of beauty, quality and vision. Although all that has been underneath Crass from the start it hasn’t always been clear that Crass itself is trying to push things onto a different stage.
Penny Rimbaud: The new LP that we’ve done, I imagine most grannies would prefer it to most so called punks. I should think a lot of punks will be thoroughly pissed off, ’cause it doesn’t say fuck in every song. It will be interesting to see what happens, to see how many people reject it in the same way their parents reject punk.
Do you think that it’s bad that you became so popular just as a musical group?
P.W: No, because any situation we’re faced with in life is an opportunity for us to use. So we don’t assume popularity. If we are faced with a possibility we’ll use it to the best of our abilities. So our ability to be a popular punk band has introduced people to a whole series of things that they might not have found. The bands we’ve played with people might not have gone to see, or a film or other performance. So we’ve capitalised on our ability and to some extent it’s the very need for us to drive as a punk band that has slowed us down.
So are you moving away from the more aggressive (angry) music you’ve produced in the past?
P.R: I think that our anger is our passion and on a superficial level people may not be able to recognise the anger, a lot of people who have parodied us have effectively come across with an aggressive stance and have really, in my view, been exposing their emptiness. I don’t think we’ve ever been aggressive, we have been extremely angry and extremely passionate and we still are. The reason we’re spending a long time over what we do next, it’s sufficiently important to us, because we are sufficiently passionate and angry about what we feel to spend a lot of time studying and not become a parody of ourselves. It’s really important not to be drawn into a situation of doing something simply because that’s what people expect you to be doing.
Wouldn’t you agree that a lot of people see this parody of what you are more than you yourselves do? Like Crass T-shirts and badges, it’s bad that people are ripping you off making them, but they wouldn’t make them unless there was people willing to buy them?
P.R: Well it’s a start isn’t it? When you’re young all you’ve ever had is what your mum and dad have told you you’ve got to look like, or how you’ve got to behave, and the first, easiest and most obvious way of revolting against that is to get a different haircut, wear different clothes and wear a badge.
That’s the first stage in telling your parents and those people immediately around you to, basically, piss off – you want a bit of your own space and that is really the start of free thought. Up until that age people are never given the chance to think for themselves, and I think if they pick up one of our records and think “Oh I want to identify with this!” and buy a T-shirt or a badge then I don’t think that’s bad. If they went out and bought an ABBA record then all that would happen is that the values that are generally offered to them at school and by most parents would be reinforced.
It’s not a criticism, but most people grow out of the obvious elements and the more important things then take over. It ceases to matter what your hair is like, it’s more what’s beneath your hair.
But it cannot be denied that a lot of people never get beyond the first stage of t-shirts and badges.
P.R: They don’t, but then again, so what! It is better that at least they are put into a position where maybe they will go beyond that first stage. And equally well, you can say that a lot of people do go beyond. The commercial market is fully aware of the fact that people between the ages of 14 and 23 are the most easily exploited group. They come under more attack than any other age bracket, because they have got the cash and the vulnerability. Beyond 23 a person is beginning to stabilise. Generally speaking if a person is on the outside at 23 then they will remain on the outside. If they are on the outside at 14 then chances are that given the amount of pressure that is put on them they will have a hard time of it.
So if people have fun in between well… so what! If people enjoy just jumping up and down and pogoing and getting pissed to our music then that’s great… we’ve never ripped anyone off at the door and we’ve never ripped anyone off with our records. So they’ve gone out and ripped up a T-shirt and put chains on – well that’s a cheap way of having fun. If you go for the casual market you’ll be broke within a week. The fun we promote is cheap fun, and all fun should be. And if people only have fun, well so fucking what! It’s better than not having fun.
Do you think that you have succeeded in changing people?
P.R: Yeah, I think that we’ve succeeded… l think that we’ve been largely responsible for re-promoting (it would be ridiculous to pretend we created anything!) a set of ideas which have roots way back through history… these are quite simply ‘sod all authority, I as an individual have something worthwhile about me.’ That sort of thinking seems to go in cycles – there are people all over the world that have been liberated because of the sort of things that we have been saying for the last 7 years, but if we hadn’t existed then someone else would have done it. What we’ve done isn’t so important, what is important is that across the world there are people that are closer to some sense of their own lives.
G: It’s not even a qualitative thing. It can be a sense of one’s own life in a totally different direction to which you would live your own life, in the end that doesn’t really matter – it’s the quality of person, and the quality of life that comes from that. It doesn’t have to follow the same route.
P. R: Yeah, we’ve never promoted our own lifestyle, which happens to be very quiet. This house is very restful – we work very hard but very quietly, be it gardening, writing or rehearsing. We don’t say “This is the way people ought to live” – it’s the way we as individuals enjoy living.
G: And we function like that.
P.W: I think we appeal to people who are misfits and who are prepared to open up to certain ideas. We also appeal to people who are young enough, or smart enough, not to have a huge investment in the ways things are going in the rest of society. I think young people are flexible in that they haven’t got the investment that others have… They aren’t threatened by ideas so they can think more creatively.
Wouldn’t it be better to aim to get through to ‘middle-aged’ people?
P.R: Yes, well that comes in time. I mean we’ve done what we were able to do, we’ve never been lazy, and we’ve always worked very hard at doing what we were able to do. In 10 years time maybe because of the experiences and realisations that we have had we’ll think of putting £4,000 into a centre for psycho-geriatrics rather than into an Anarchy centre. I think what we did 7 years ago was very important to us, it manifested and we became popular hand in hand with a huge number of important social developments. It is not impossible that in our future projects we will find some way of being active in other areas.
You sound very optimistic, but don’t you think that after an upsurge in radical activity everything has fallen off rather dramatically?
P.R: No, I don’t actually, because what’s far more important is what’s going on in people’s minds. If you look at the last 7 years there has been a fast and dramatic rebirth of awareness. That awareness had been around in a different form on a very strong front for about 10 years previously, and 7 years ago it suddenly blossomed again.
A lot of people like ourselves walked up a lot of dark alleys and came walking back again, looking for other bits of light. When it’s quiet you can be pretty certain that are having a good think about what’s going on. I mean, yes, my first feeling was ‘shit, it’s all over, after all that effort nothing’s been achieved.’
Joy: I think you’re just talking about ideas.
P.R: Yes, there’s superficial manifestations of things like Stop The City. People say that the last S.T.C. was the worst, but for me it was the best. I turned up, wandered around and realised that the police had got it completely sussed. So then I just wandered around talking to people, and I had some great conversations and I got to know one or two people, and I didn’t know who they were and they didn’t know who I was. I saw and felt a lot of things.
The S.T.C. before that I’d spent the entire time shoving the police around, and apparently this is a far out active thing to do. I’m not putting down the shoving, if that is what we have to do, if we have to lob bricks then fair enough. I’m not making any qualitative judgment, but it’s pretty bloody stupid when we start thinking that shoving and being shoved by the police is better in some way than creatively sharing an experience with people.
P.W: There are a lot of people who are prepared to do things now. It’s not actually doing them, the most important contribution that we can make as a group of people is to expand the vocabulary of people who want to do things. There has always been people chucking bricks at the police, and there has always been people going on strike and all sorts of actions.
The most important thing is the understanding that develops. Like the miners, there were people learning what life is about, that there is more to life than they thought before; they’ve got to know the people they live with, seeing their workmates in different situations. They found the power of communal action and communal co-operation; those sorts of things are what we get out of it. That’s the positive side whether we win or lose a particular battle doesn’t matter that much because it’s just a battle.
P.R: I think it’s really important to know when to back off. That needn’t be a defeat; it can be a very positive thing which allows the opponent to move into some of the space you’ve created. But if we’re trying to create change then we’ve got to sometimes (although our pride might suffer) back off and say “Okay look this is what I think; this is the view that I have created; now you see if you can move in that space.”
Now the chances are that you will be shat upon, but unless we’re prepared to back off then you’re in a state permanent argument and there is no point in that, it’s bad tactics. Then the whole situation is maintained, it is to the government’s advantage to promote a situation of animosity.
Joy: We are constantly spending energy on argument rather than something more subtle.
P.R: It’s rather like that situation at S.T.C. where the police had sort of got everyone enclosed. Well, it was to everyone’s advantage ’cause what the hell would everyone have done? They’d probably have got fucking bored and gone off home!
I can see what you are saying, but, putting it simply, are you really so optimistic about the future? You say it’s good that we’re not in a state of argument, but is everybody sitting back and thinking or are they saying “Oh hell, the whole thing is falling apart”?
P.W: It’s all according to what your objective is. If you want Cruise missiles out of this country, then forget it -you’re not going to do it. But if your objective is to enlighten people and to grow, then there is every possibility because you must see that the pillar of all that is yourself. I think that the lull at the moment is incredibly strong, I sense that there is a lot going on in peoples’ heads.
I mean that sense of morality, of humanity, is in all people albeit carved up half dozen kids, a mortgage and the rest of it. It is still in there, it’s innate, it is there, and it’s coming alive in the most unlikely people. That is very important.
P.R: We have fluidity which is one thing they don’t have, as the state becomes more and more rigid in its attitude and the manner by which that attitude is enforced, parallel to that our intelligence grows, our fluidity grows, and our compassion and love for each other grows. The right wing state throughout history has made that mistake.
Surely all of this is very long term? What about immediate problems like people that are starving… now?
G: Yes they are immediate, yes there are millions of people starving every day, but I cannot do anything about that, I can only hope to build for the future… a society that would never put up with that sort of shit… the individual cannot stop it.
P.R: One also has to understand that the very fact that we are aware of starvation is a piece of political propaganda. There are people starving in the world in just the same situation as the people of Ethiopia. It’s interesting that because Ethiopia is backed by Russia as opposed to the West there is this hysterical outcry. The way we hear about things is carefully engineered.
What’s happening in Ethiopia is not unusual in the Third World. Ethiopia is a useful propaganda stunt; America wants to get its hands on Ethiopia… blah blah blah! The reason starvation exists is political. Food is not shared for political reasons.
You have to look at it in the long term, if you look at the short term you will soon be burnt out. Driven to the frustration and anger that so many radicals have. One has to have the strength to stand back and say ‘look, I know I’m right, I know what I feel is good, I know I act out of the purest reason.’ And then spend the rest of the day knitting.
Yes, I have thought all of that before, that faced with the ‘politics of depression’ you must see it as their weapon and stand off. But ultimately you cannot live outside the system – everything you do is connected with the system.
G: But you try and live with it and not at the cost of it. Of course no-one can live outside the system, everything in this room is in some way a product of it. You cannot totally detach. But you must look at the properties that are of use to you, like this light bulb, but see that there is little it can offer your soul.
P.W: The big illusion is that you change systems by opposition, and they don’t, they might be destroyed by opposition but the power you would need would probably make you a similar system.
Systems change by facing in the same direction as other people who YOU change. So the theatre of opposition like, S.T.C. or Greenham is one of apparent opposition. People see us as being up against the system, but we’re not – we are trying to affect the people that we stand beside – the people who come to gigs and buy records, people who are facing in the same direction. And whether the person who buys the record is a 12 year old punk or a middle-aged civil servant (it does happen!) the change occurs by being beside and facing in the same direction.
But in saying these things you are very lucky people, you are in a relatively comfortable position where you can look to the future without the loneliness, hardship or depression that faces many others.
P.R: I think that we are lucky in that we don’t need some of the things that create bondage and hunger, in the sense that we don’t have a standard of life to maintain. Where we live is where we work, we’ve put years of work into maintaining it as such. But if we were told to leave tomorrow, then we would do so actively and creatively as individuals.
Not so much luck – it’s down to hard work. Ultimately I would be happy in a shed in a field or in one room of a squat. It doesn’t really matter, it’s what I carry in my head that’s important to me – the actual physical furniture I can find later.
Invariably one does have to go out and do some shitty job. If one sees it as a shitty job then one does it resentfully and badly, but if you can see it as a method towards something then it becomes an exciting and creative thing to do. If in three months’ work you can get a printing press, then that’s a fucking bargain.
It’s an awful thing to think that whatever you doing is the fate for the rest of your life – I only ever thought this once. When I first left school I worked for a year and a half in a fucking awful job. I got into a real screwball ’cause I thought I’d be doing it forever… THAT is the big trap and in a lot of cases it is what people do for the rest of their lives.
G: There is no reason why anyone can’t turn their hand or their whole living situation.
P.R: That’s the whole bullshit of people like the Band Aid record. There are all these fucking near millionaires taking peanuts of their pockets. I mean if they actually meant it and really did mean to help the situation, it wouldn’t happen. If it wasn’t for people like Boy George and all the rest of the hip capitalists in the world it would not exist. Boy George is just a drag stockbroker, that’s what it boils down to. Yet apparently these people care….
The big social pantomime is that these people really mime ‘care’. Boy George cares about Ethiopians, he cares about war ’cause it’s ‘stupid’!! That’s what we are working against, well… it’s not competition, and it’s what you’ve got floating about all the time.
G: No, it’s not competition. It is like another knock in the teeth, like a coconut shy. Every time you put something up for discussion it gets knocked down by some co-opting idiot who makes it into a facile statement. ‘War is stupid’… I couldn’t believe it!
You know that you have to make another greater effort to get war out of being co-opted by some stupid arsehole in the pop world. Get it back up for discussion again.
So how have you managed to keep at it, it must take a great deal of determination and all that?
P.R: Just graft really, being prepared to graft, that’s all, nothing else.
You can only do so much by graft, surely you have to turn to someone to say… distribute your records?
P.R: We do all our own distribution and everything we possibly can ourselves. If we do it we know it will get done properly.
G: I think the advantage we have is that all the people concerned with the band, or helping with the paperwork etc. have known each other a long long time; we have been through a lot and have an understanding and a respect for each other. I think one of the downfalls of a lot of other bands is that they don’t really know each other; you can’t just start with a guitarist and hope that somebody like-minded is going to come along. It takes years – it’s never ending trying to get to know people……….
Well it is here that the written interview ends, though we chatted and argued long after the tape had run its course. So how do you sum up a group of people like CRASS? Perhaps a look at their influence from the ultimate symbol of materialistic exploitation of the young – the music charts:
“It’s sinister that we can sell 20,000 records and not appear in the charts, a very effective way of shutting you up. We would expect if we put out an LP for it to sell 20,000 in the first few weeks…”
“…Stations has now sold over 90,000, and when it goes to 100,000 we’ll press one in chocolate and present it to each other and then take some photos and send them to the press, because the music press tries to pretend that we don’t sell thousands of records. If the charts had been honest then we’d have been in the actual top ten on a number of occasions i.e.; Nagasaki Nightmare, Penis Envy, and Christ The Album…”
Daz163
June 22, 2009 at 9:24 pmThanks to all involved for sharing!
Penguin • Post Author •
June 22, 2009 at 10:10 pmA whole heap of rare Crass rehearsals, gigs etc on this site if you use the search function.
PeTe
June 23, 2009 at 8:52 amCannot download this gig???? all others work ok is there a fault???
Penguin • Post Author •
June 23, 2009 at 8:58 amNope all good here, mediafire can sometimes be a little temper mental though when the download traffic is high.
PeTe
June 23, 2009 at 10:55 amStill cannot download all other systems ok?????
Penguin • Post Author •
June 23, 2009 at 11:16 amWorks fine here. You getting any specific messages on your download page?
Trunt
June 23, 2009 at 4:06 pmThe first two photos of Crass were taken at Cleatormoor Civic Hall 1984. Also on the bill was Flux, Annie A and D&V. Brilliant gig. As a collector of old anarcho photos, these are great. Anyone out there got anymore.
PeTe
June 23, 2009 at 5:53 pmThe message says your Click here to start download..then your download is starting but just continues like that no box with prompt to save file to where you want? Rubella Ballet worked ok earlier anyone else having this problem with Crass or just me?
Penguin • Post Author •
June 23, 2009 at 6:09 pmTrunt, you have a good memory, Martin Flux also has a decent one and wrote the details on the back of each photograph. Those photos are actually listed as Cleator Moor in the photogallery, there are hundreds of photos to browse there if you ‘collect’ photos!
The one of the empty hall is actually St Georges Hall though.
PeTe
June 24, 2009 at 9:40 amAnyone else downloaded this ok? Still cannot get it downloaded everything else ok?
John Serpico
June 30, 2009 at 11:16 pmThis was the last time that I ever saw Crass play live. I travelled down from Bristol and was a bit surprised that there seemed to be no other Bristolians there, although I do recall seeing Demolition Diner residents Lee and Fran there who were later to become prominent in Class War (not that this would mean anything to KYPP people although it’s significant to Bristol history).
St Georges Hall was a nice, big venue and as usual, Crass members were out mingling with the audience beforehand, Penny in rags and Steve in a fetching trilby hat. The venue was split into two big halls, if I remember rightly, one with a bar and one with the stage. Just as the first band came on – No Defences – Andy Palmer called out loudly to everyone in the bar area: “The first band are about to start, if anyone’s interested.”
This struck me as sounding a bit odd as there was a sense of weary cynicism in the way that he announced it, “If anyone’s interested”, as if he felt that a lot of the audience weren’t really interested in seeing a support band. The full line-up for the gig was: Crass, Annie Anxiety, Flux Of Pink Indians, D&V and No Defences. Flux on that night were outstanding.
When Crass came on, like it or not they were the undisputed masters and commanded respect. There were a few young kids down at the front who were spitting at Crass and I went up to them and told them to fucking stop. There also seemed to be a fair few people taking photos, which has always made me wonder what they did with these photos – where are they now?
Crass were brilliant, of course, but about half way into their set it suddenly dawned on me that I had seen and heard all this before. That I could easily walk out at that moment and know that I would not be missing anything that I had not seen before.
Crass had always been very ‘newsy’ and had always led the way in reporting and commenting on what was going on in Britain but I saw then that they were no longer saying anything new. They were jogging on the spot. They were still putting on a very good roadshow and were still an exciting live act but they were always about much, much more than that. Crass were inextricably linked to the politics of the day and for us who had grown up with them and taken heed of what they had pointed at, for them to finally point straight back at us as being the solution paradoxically caused an impasse for the band. And a frustrating impasse at that as clearly there was not enough of us acting on the awareness we had gained, highlighted by Pete Wright’s frustrated cry of: “We’re in a police state! What are you gonna do about it?”
At this gig, Crass were giving out double pages of A4 sized papers consisting of densely packed text, entitled ‘What Now? Where Now?’ Presumably written by Penny, it was essentially a rumination on the state of the so-called ‘peace movement’ and if whether through the actions and words of Crass, the outcome would one day be violence? Penny was pondering whether he would be able to pull the trigger if his hand might one day be on a gun? As a metaphor, he compared Crass to doing a limbo under a door but hitting your head on the way back up. This was the point at which the peace movement, Crass and Penny had reached, so begging the question ‘What now? Where now?’.
I was considering going down to Cornwall to see Crass on the next date of this tour but decided against it. It came as no real surprise that shortly after this Crass were to play their last ever gig, the miners benefit at Aberdare, Wales.
As an aside, ‘Big A Little A’ was played twice on that night in Exeter due to Steve collapsing on stage during the first rendition. Like true professionals the rest of the band tried to keep the show going before members of the audience began beckoning to them that Steve seemed not to be moving and that he might not be well. He quickly picked himself up, however, and the show did indeed go on. Until they got to Wales, that is….
mrmagoo
July 13, 2009 at 6:06 pmPeTe, you need to allow pop ups for the download to appear sounds like your browser is blocking them hope this helps……go to my blog for rare bootlegs on mob, partisans, enemy, vex,etc etc
Craig Pancrack
July 16, 2009 at 9:48 pmCheck out my ‘Penny Rimbaud Talks’ 64 min youtube series from 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zzA05lIDZY
greg
February 24, 2010 at 6:20 pmLinks doesnt work for me 🙁 could someone post a mirror?
Kris
February 24, 2010 at 6:24 pmPeTe, I have problems downloading too!
“Unable to connect” !
Penguin • Post Author •
February 24, 2010 at 6:26 pmI will check the links when I get home tonight. Try again after 21.00 GMT and whatever the problem is should be sorted.
Penguin • Post Author •
February 24, 2010 at 7:18 pmMedia fire seems to have sorted itself out without my help. Fill yer boots people.
Andy T
February 25, 2010 at 12:23 pmJohn Serpico mentions the line up at the Exeter date, though I definitely remember my being on this tour too. I had a guitarist friend [Nigel Banks] backing me, with a large flight case of pedals. Penny was particually interested in the improvised aspect of the set. We’d been planning an LP on Corpus Christi for a while, which never happened.
I seem to recall we stayed with Toxic Shock after the gig, He was from Exeter and I think, though can’t be sure, they played too. The night before was Aigbeth, Liverpool. I did a gig in Manchester with Zounds last Sunday [21st Feb 2010] and someone came up to me who’d last seen me at the Liverpool gig.
Possibly, John might be getting mixed up with the 1982 Exeter gig, which I went to but didn’t play? The line up he mentions sounds more like that one.
Cheers for now, Andy T
Chris L
March 1, 2010 at 9:33 pmUnashamed shoe-horning of a plug for my old spar Victor Torpedo’s exhibition – http://www.wilsonwilliamsgallery.com/77.htm – but i’m sure I spied Phil Free at the opening party for this.
Penguin, if you want to move this to a more appropriate section of the site that’s be great.
John Serpico
October 15, 2010 at 11:49 pmI came upon the booklet that was given out at this gig and the full line-up – officially, anyway – says: Crass, Flux, Annie, Choosing Death (which was a film), D&V and No Defences. Saying that, however, I’ve got an idea that Andy T did play also although his appearance wasn’t publicised in advance. According to the booklet, the cost of putting on the gig amounted to £600. This was £400 for the bands, PA and transport with £200 for the hall and publicity. 400 people were needed to attend to cover costs and any additional money raised was to be split between Molesworth Peace Camp and the camp at USAF Alconbury.
And talking of gigs that Andy T played (or didn’t play) did he play at the Zig Zag squat gig? I’ve never seen him acknowledged for doing so but I’ve got an idea he did? Didn’t T42 also do some poems at the Zig Zag?
Andy? Can you remember?
Graham Burnett
October 16, 2010 at 9:57 amYes T42 (aka Seaman Stockton) definately performed at the Zig Zag, heres a photo http://www.gb0063551.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/anarchopunk/original/t42.jpg . BTW the last time I saw him perform was reading poetry up a tree at Dial House about 2 years ago…
FokkerTISM
October 1, 2012 at 1:40 pmDoes anyone have the gig of July 7 1984 of Crass? I don’t want you to take the link of the crappy quality version being distributed around the internet. If you have your own tape of July 7 1984, I want you to rip it.
Penguin • Post Author •
October 1, 2012 at 9:00 pmI do not have a tape of that gig. I guess by the date it was the performance supporting the striking miners in Wales. If I get lent it or find one around I will of course upload it. For your information all the records and cassettes on this site are recorded fresh by myself to post up on the KYPP site. I never ever take anything from any other sites…
Graham Burnett
October 1, 2012 at 11:01 pmPengy/Fokker – I have that gig on CD, I always had plans to put it out as a benefit for Dial House (Pen gave me permission) but never got around to doing anything about it – the quallity is reasonable as I recall but not brilliant – certainly listenable – if you like I’ll fwd it to you and you can stick it on the site
Graham Burnett
October 1, 2012 at 11:04 pmI even did artwork for the Cd so will upload that as well…
Penguin • Post Author •
October 3, 2012 at 10:42 pmHere you go Fokker; recorded at 320 through my harddrive and so forth. Dunno if the recording is any better than anything on the www but whatever: https://killyourpetpuppy.co.uk/news/crass-aberdare-coliseum-110784/
All the best…
allan clifford
March 29, 2013 at 11:39 pmJust for the record i did this interview. Seems to becoming a standard text in crasstiography.hope you well Penguin!
Penguin • Post Author •
April 9, 2013 at 10:31 amHi Allan, just back off a few weeks in the Caribbean. All good here thanks. I will change the text in the Crass post above for you. Was Aiden something to do with Mucilage though? Small thin guy with a red / gingerish mohawk? Or am I completely mistaken? Seem to remember the name and meeting him on a few occasions…
Jaz
October 21, 2013 at 11:20 pmI was lucky enough to attend the Crass gig in Exeter and it will remain in my memory forever.
I had grown up in Gillingham, Dorset, which is lucky enough to have a train station on the main London to Exeter line and there was no way that I was going to miss this gig. We had formed Virus in the summer of 1983 and although we were relatively young (16/17) we had all been seriously into the anarcho punk scene for three or four years and had been lucky enough to see many bands all over the south-west including The Mob (Hinton St George), Subhumans (everywhere!) and many other smaller but non-the-less relevant local anarcho bands in various village halls, skittle alleys and scout huts. Together with Bowzer (guitar Virus), Dave (vocals Virus), Crabby (guitar Nymphomania) and Edward Lavender, we travelled down to Exeter St Davids station in the afternoon eager to see not only Crass but also Flux and D&V.
St George’s Hall was a big venue for Crass to play and it was full to rafters but there was also a sense of knowing that this was perhaps one of the last live performances the band would ever play. I recognised some familiar faces in the crowd, mutual nods and ‘alright’s were exchanged with punks who had been to gigs all around Wessex, some of whom I could name, others I couldn’t.
Before any band had played members of Crass (those I remember being Steve Ignorant, Andy Palmer and Pete Wright) mingled in the bar, talking to everyone and dishing out pamphlets. No Defences, who I knew very little about but the rumour was they were doing a EP on Spiderleg were also moving around the crowd giving out the little booklet (which I still have) prior to taking the stage.
Our lot moved right to the front and ended up between the bass amp on the right hand side of the stage and the main vocal mic – the crowd were in good spirits and No Defences delivered a confident set for an opening band and the general consensus was that they were great and when an EP was released it would rapidly be lapped up.
D&V followed and vehemently delivered most, if not all, of their ‘Nearest Door’ EP – I was under the impression that they weren’t that well known at the gig but I thought they sensed that something was in the air that night and played a blinder.
I can’t remember if Annie Anxiety played next but I do recall that whilst on stage there were mutterings around us that she was weird!
Flux were on fire that night – they were angry, loud, passionate and the entire crowd went wild when the played with such fury. I don’t recall too much of ‘The Fucking Cunts’ being played, this was more ‘Strive to Survive’, Neu Smell and ‘Taking A Liberty’ and bloody brilliant it was too!
By the time Crass came on, the place was incredibly hot, sweaty and cramped (well right at the front it was). Steve Ignorant looked exhausted before he had even sung a word and much as Crass were great that night, Steve seemed to be somewhere different. During Big A, Little A, he slipped on a monitor, fell and smacked his head on another monitor, right in front of where we were standing. It took some time and a lot of coaxing from the crowd for a very groggy Ignorant to raise his head and pick up the microphone again, he wasn’t right for the rest of the night following that fall.
At the end of the gig, virtually all of Crass and Flux came into the crowd carrying buckets of badges that they gave away to the punters (again which I still have) and as we had no train to catch home we hung around the hall and sat down and talked to Crass and Flux. The topics of conversation ranged from Captain Sensible selling out (much to the distain of Derek from Flux who had spotted my Damned badge), through to us (Virus) organising a gig in Gillingham for Flux on their forthcoming tour later that summer. We offered to help load all the gear out of the hall, an offer that was greatly appreciated and accepted – I’ll never forget Edward was wearing a leather jacket and getting caught on a door handle as Steve, Andy, me and him carried a PA speaker down some stairs and Edward saying watch his jacket to which Steve delivered a furious outburst about it being made of leather. I don’t think Edward ever forgot that and rapidly went off Crass and go into metal bands like Metallica and riding motorbikes.
When Crass, Flux and the rest of the bands were loaded up, they waved us goodbye, promising to call me about organising a gig later in the year and I think we all knew that we had witnessed something special that night. Exeter St Davids was a cold place to spend the night and we bumped into some punks who were catching the same train as us but getting off at Yeovil Junction, so we ended up chatting all night about bands and gigs.
A few weeks later, Tim and Martin from Flux got in touch about a gig in Gillingham for their forthcoming Miner’s Strike tour but that’s another story…